
Book .W? W7 

PRESENTED tN" 



A SON'S TRIBUTE 



PUBLISHED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION 
BY 

C. C. WOOLWORTH V 



Ube Icntcfterbocfter press 

NEW YORK 
1920 



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As I was coming into the hall this evening, I 
received a program and in it I found my ad- 
dress named, A Son's Tribute, I am grateful to 
whoever edited that title into the program. 
That tribute can never exaggerate the admiration, 
the affection, and the love of that son for that fa- 
ther. I never knew an act or heard a word of his 
that I would have preferred omitted, and I am 
glad of this appropriate opportunity to make 
these public declarations. 



Grace Chamberlain, daughter of Alfred Cham- 
berlain, later wife of Calvin Walrad, handed me 
this morning the Jubilee book of 1846, and as it 
goes back of what I have prepared, even to the 
first years of my father's work in the Academy, I 
will read from the historical sketch. "For the 
last sixteen years the school has enjoyed the effi- 
cient and successful superintendence of its present 
principal, and it is no more than a single act of 
justice to say that it is largely indebted for its 
commanding position to his untiring energy." 

This reference, with what follows, completes the 
sketch of Principal Woolworth's life here from 
1830 inclusive to 1852. 



A SON'S TRIBUTE 

ADDRESS DELIVERED BY CALVIN C. WOOLWORTH 
AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF CORT- 
LAND ACADEMY, CELEBRATED AT HOMER, N. Y., 
JUNE, I919. 

I HAVE been asked for reminiscences of the early 
days of the academy and especially about my fa- 
ther. I can give a few details in response to the 
latter part of the invitation by reading from a 
letter to Dr. VanderVeer, Vice Chancellor of the 
Regents of the University of the State of New 
York — as follows : 

Buck Hill Falls, Pa., August 4, 19 17. 

Your frequent references to the character and 
work of my father have been very gratifying and I 
now want to tell you something of his earlier days. 
He was born in Bridgehampton, Long Island, in 
1800, son of Rev. Aaron Woolworth, D.D. He 
graduated from Hamilton College in 1822. Then 
Principal of Monson Academy, Mass., 1822 to 1824. 
Then principal of Onondaga Academy, 1824 to 

7 



1830. Then principal of Cortland Academy from 
1830 to 1852. He was Trustee of Hamilton CoV- 
lege from 1836 to 1880; President of the Board g)f 
Trustees of Hamilton College from 1874 to i88q>, 
and received from Hamilton the degree of LLX'i. 
He was the founder and the first President of the 
New York State Teacher's Association — 1847- 
1848. In 1852 he became principal, at that time, 
of the first and only New York State Normal 
School at Albany. In 1 856-1 880 he was Secre- 
tary of the Board of Regents. He was the orig- 
inator of the Regent's questions, and of the summer 
convocations of the Regents. He died in Brook- 
lyn, N. Y., June 30, 1880, and was buried in Homer, 
July 3, 1880. 

Eighty years of life, sixty years of public ser- 
vice as an educator, an uninterrupted life work. 
It was a grave question whether he should make 
the change from his established work in the Acad- 
emy to the new and somewhat experimental 
Normal School, which had not entirely overcome 
the prejudice of the public. 

At Homer he left a school of very high char- 
acter, of about five hundred pupils. Five thousand 
pupils had passed under his care. The Academy 
a financial success, no debt, and some thousands 
of dollars in the treasury — and he was supported 
by a community of rugged, sturdy, honest people, 
who loved the Academy and were united in giving 
it their undivided support. 

8 



He once said to me, * * I never had any resistance 
to my plans, but was always careful to make no 
suggestions but such as were supported by com- 
mon sense." Homer, at that time a village of 
about 1500 people, was settled in the eighteenth 
century by emigration from New England, who in 
that beautiful valley, covered by a splendid forest, 
gradually opened up their farms and with in- 
dustry, frugality, and clean, honest living: — some- 
thing like Elihu Root's description in one of his 
recent addresses, where he says, *' There is a 
plain old house on the hills of Oneida, in the 
Mohawk valley, where in my youth truth and 
honor dwelt." 

Is it any wonder that such environments 
should produce such men as at Clinton, Elihu Root, 
and at Homer, as Andrew White, the Syrian Mis- 
sionaries, Henry Jessup and Samuel Jessup, Henry 
A. Nelson, D.D., who during the stormy days of 
the Civil War was the Union Pastor of the First 
Presbyterian Church in Saint Louis, Mo., and 
whose descendants are now missionaries in Syria, 
Edward Hitchcock, for many years pastor of the 
American Chapel in Paris, Theodore Munger; two 
United States Senators — James, or as we used to 
call him, Jim Nye of Nevada and Ira Harris, 
United States Senator for New York; his brother 
Hamilton Harris, who once said, "But for Cortland 
Academy we would both he plowing the Preble 
flats"; Dr. Stephen Smith, Lawrence McCully, 

9 



Chief Justice of the Sandwich Islands; Frank 
Carpenter and many other splendid men? 

The religious influences were important . All the 
denominations in the village — Congregational, 
Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal — were united in love 
for the Academy, and the weekly winter evening 
meetings were generally conducted by Professor 
Gallup, professor of Latin and Greek, himself a 
Baptist, opening with his favorite hymn, "Alas 
and did my Saviour bleed," and frequently as- 
sociated with him was one or another of the 
clergymen, and in that old Academy lecture 
room the most solemn and tender atmosphere 
prevailed. 

Louis A. Miller, Professor of Mathematics, had 
risen from an uneducated blacksmith. He be- 
came interested in Mathematics and so absorbed 
was he in the subject that he mastered the French 
language that he might study the works of LaPlace 
on mathematical astronomy and finally mastered 
the subject to the solutions of Celeste, an achieve- 
ment rarely accomplished. He had never thought 
much of religion until he was finally so impressed 
with the infinite and majestic work of the Creator 
that he appeared in one of those evening meetings 
and undertook to tell how it had led to his conver- 
sion, and with a broken voice was compelled to sit 
down, overcome with emotion. 

This was about 1849, and I was recently de- 
scribing the event when one of my hearers — 

10 



Amelia Stone Quinton — said, "I was present and 
remember it perfectly." 

One of the Trustees of the Academy was that 
lovely Dr. Bradford, who as State Senator in about 
1850, secured legislation for the relief of the County 
insane from their deplorable condition. The first 
movement of the kind and continued by Dr. Ste- 
phen Smith who has given so many of the ninety- 
seven years of his life in service for human welfare. 

He whom you knew as Principal Woolworth 
was universally beloved by the community and his 
pupils, and let me assure you these sentiments were 
appreciated and were reciprocated and he was al- 
ways glad to continue his interest in and assistance 
to the Academy from his position as Executive 
officer of the Regents. 

Andrew White's Biography says, "From the 
first the public care of the early settlers has been 
a church and second a school, and this school has 
been speedily developed into Cortland Academy, 
and as a boy of five or six years of age I was very 
proud to read on the cornerstone of the Academy 
my grandfather's name, Andrew Dickson, who was 
one of the original founders and not unlikely there 
came to my blood the strain which has led me since 
to feel that the building up of a goodly institution 
is more honorable than any other work. 

"An idea which was at the bottom of my efforts 
in developing the University of Michigan and the 
founding of Cornell University" (and let me here 

II 



add, that at the Cornell Commencement last week 
President Schurman announced that thirty thou- 
sand Cornell graduates were scattered throughout 
the world). "I shall never forget the awe that 
came over me when as a child I saw Principal Wool- 
worth with his best students around him on the 
green making astronomical observations through a 
small telescope." 

He wrote me in 1915 — "I wish to thank you 
especially for the memorial of your father, I have 
read it with especial interest on various accounts, 
partly for its historical value and partly for its re- 
vival of him in the days of his principalship in the 
little old town. In my early youth I held him in 
great respect, even awe, and of course not daring to 
make any near approach to him, but later when in 
the Senate at Albany I came to know him and prize 
his work with the Board of Regents. I recall with 
great pleasure meeting him at Cornell, at Union, 
and at Hamilton and his direct work for education 
throughout the whole state exercised an important 
influence happily felt in various other parts of the 
Union. 

' ' I am glad to know that Elihu Root came under 
his influence and I presume that his father whom I 
used to know at Syracuse Academy, before he went 
to Hamilton owed some of the best features of his 
development to your father." 

Seymour Cook, Class of 1849, writes me from 
Whitewater, Wisconsin, "Your father was a model 

12 



instructor and a disciplinarian unequaled. The 
boys were full of mischief but with wonderful tact 
and experience he was more than a match for the 
brightest of them, and far better he retained their 
respect and love." But the boys were not always 
asleep and one Sunday morning, the distribution of 
signs the previous night had left a milliner's sign 
over our door and a blacksmith's sign over the 
door of Rev. Mr. Fessenden. 

One afternoon as all the pupils had gathered in 
the Academy Hall for the closing exercises they saw 
a lumber wagon on the stage and when Principal 
Wool worth came in he assumed not to notice it, but 
just at the close of the exercises he said, "Thomas 
Smith, Elliot Reed, John Coye (and others) — I 
wish you to remain after the dismissal." He then 
told them to replace the wagon where they found it. 

Homer has always been a clean, well-kept vil- 
lage and seems to get more attractive every year. 
And those beautiful acres on yonder hillside have 
not been neglected, where so many of our beloved 
— and in my case four generations of ancestors, de- 
scendents, and wife for fifty-seven years — are now 
awaiting the dawning of the resurrection morning. 

These Centennial festivities which we have 
been so generously invited to share have brought 
back many faces and memories of more than 
seventy years ago. It all fills me with emotions I 
cannot express. 

13 



Selections 



15 



looo Park Avenue, New York, December 8, 1919. 

My dear Cal. Woolworth : 

Inclosed I send you the substance of my remarks 
in regard to your Father with something addi- 
tional. If not suitable for your purposes let me 
know and will change it. I am glad you are about 
to memorialize your Father's life and work. I 
have not received the booklet which the Homer 
folk are to publish. Trusting you are well and 
with kind regards to your daughter, 
Sincerely yours, 

Stephen Smith. 



The Principal, Prof. Samuel B. Woolworth, had 
a State-wide reputation as a successful educator. 
His familiarity with the habits and social customs 
of the people peculiarly fitted him for the training 
of the sons and daughters of the communities of the 
Homer Academy District. He had a dignified 
personality and a reserved manner which enforced 

17 



strict compliance with the rules of the Academy 
and yet he was most genial and helpful when stu- 
dents sought his aid or advice in regard to their 
studies. 

I was impressed with his genial, social nature on 
my first attendance at a class recitation. I had 
studied the languages at home during the intervals 
of farm work and was not very well qualified to 
enter a class commencing reading Livy. But that 
was my classification and I entered the class of 
twelve students all of whom had studied Latin 
for two or three years. Our first lesson was, of 
course, the preface of the history, a page in 
length. I spent a day and night on its translation 
and construed only two or three sentences so as to 
be at all satisfactory. I entered the class greatly 
depressed and with the determination to request 
the Professor to transfer me to a less advanced 
class. 

At the head of the class was an advanced student 
of three years and the most intense interest was 
manifested by the class when he was requested to 
translate the first sentence. He failed entirely as 
did each successive member of the class. When 
the last failed the Professor construed the sentence 
into the most perfect English and with a few re- 
marks on the beauties of this remarkable piece of 
classical Latin dismissed the class. 

Quite unfamiliar with the rules of Academic 
etiquette I boldly followed the Professor to his 

i8 



private room and entering without invitation, I 
said: 

''Mr. Woolworth I don't see how you put these 
words together in such way as to make the sen- 
tence you gave us in such fine English." 

Smiling, probably at my boorish impertinence, 
he discoursed for several minutes on the peculiari- 
ties of the Latin construction of a sentence com- 
pared with the English. This explanation was so 
clear that I never had any trouble with Latin 
after that interview and soon began to construe 
correctly the difficult sentences which passed along 
the class. 

During the term the Professor was absent a 
week in New York attending a convention and 
when he left he assigned me to teach the next lower 
Latin class much to the annoyance of the older 
members of the first Latin class. 



FROM GRACE CHAM BERLIN WALRAD S HISTORICAL 
ADDRESS AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 

No paper would be complete without a special 
mention of Principal Woolworth. From 1830 to 
1852 Cortland Academy had a reputation not ex- 
celled by any similar institution. Principal Wool- 
worth was a man of rare ability, an excellent 
teacher, a good executive and possessed of that 
rare and much needed quality, tact. 

19 



Homer, N. Y., July 17, 1919. 

Mr. C. C. Woolworth, 

Lee, Mass. 
Dear Mr. Woolworth: 

I think it was in the winter of 1849 and 1850 that 
I attended the Homer Academy for a few weeks. 
I came from a very retired neighborhood about 
seven miles west of Homer village where my op- 
portunities for education were as limited as the 
very crude teaching of the common schools of those 
days made it necessary. 

While in Homer during that brief time, I was 
helped somewhat by having a little broader vision 
than before, and received some impressions from 
the large body of students gathered there and my 
observation of some of the teachers. Your father 
especially impressed me very much and I came to 
think he was a man of great wisdom and of true 
nobility, and with me he was an ideal man. 

As he used to read the Scriptures in the morning 
before the body of students, which I should think 
was three or four hundred, his selections of those 
beautiful psalms and other selections, coming from 
those lips were never quite so beautiful and so in- 
spiring. I have always cherished the memory of 
him as he used to look on those occasions and the 
fact that he represented noble things — that he 
stood for religion, morality, and righteousness has 
always been fresh in my thought and an encour- 
agement to always be true to the best things. 

20 



I have no doubt but that he was regarded by the 
mass of the students much the same as I regarded 
him, and any opposition to the principal of the 
school would have brought ignominy and disgrace 
on the part of any pupil or combination of pupils. 
When we consider the many thousand students 
that came under his care, we must come to the con- 
clusion that his influence extended far and wide. 
I think I received more benefit from my personal 
knowledge of Dr. Woolworth and the conception 
I formed of his character and life than I did from 
the teaching of the schoolroom during my brief 
stay. 

I am very glad of this opportunity to express my 
very high appreciation of your father and my obli- 
gation to him. 

Very cordially yours, 

E. G. Ranney. 



FROM LLOYD GLOVERS ADDRESS AT THE CORTLAND 
ACADEMY, JUBILEE, 1846 

Here within the influence of Cortland Academy 
I formed many friendships and acquaintances 
which even now I should be pained to have 
broken. On the morning of my departure from 
this village I took the hand of our principal to 
bid him adieu. He gave me his recommenda- 
tion and I then resolved that I would never 

21 



dishonor it or the precepts which he had taught 
me. 

FROM THE ** FAMILY MAGAZINE," 1 838 

Cortland Academy has been for some time one 
of the most flourishing institutions of its kind in 
the State. It has six teachers (four gentlemen and 
two ladies) and as many departments. The 
course of study pursued in this institution is de- 
signed to present a thorough preparation for ad- 
mission to colleges and for active business in the 
various spheres in which the youth of our country 
are called to act. It is furnished with a valuable 
philosophical and chemical apparatus, an extensive 
and valuable cabinet of minerals and geological 
specimens and a library. Lectures are delivered 
on chemistry, natural history, and geology. The 
healthful situation of the institution, the very few 
inducements to vice, the moral character of the 
community, and the assiduous attention of the 
teachers to the duties devolving on them, exert 
a very favorable and manifest influence over 
the habits of the student. This institution 
was founded February 2, 1819. The whole 
number of students who attended during the 
year ending December, 1836 was 366 — males, 
211; females, 155. 

S. B. WooLWORTH, A.M., Principal. 
22 



HOMER ACADEMY, CENTURY RECORD 

A s Reviewed by the State Department oj Education 

The following communication from Albert Van- 
der Veer, M.D., the venerable vice chancellor of 
the board of regents, University of the State of 
New York, was read by Mrs. E. W. Hyatt at the 
opening meeting of the Homer academy centenary 
celebration, June 25th, and is so interesting and 
informing to friends of Homer's splendid academy, 
that it deserves a place in these columns, as many 
were not privileged to hear it on that occasion : 

To the President and Trustees of the Cortland 
Academy and Union School : 

You are celebrating the one hundredth anni- 
versary of the founding of an institution whose 
work has been far above the average. The Cort- 
land academy was incorporated by the board of 
regents more than a century ago, the charter being 
dated February 2, 18 19. No one can estimate the 
value of the history recorded and the loyal support 
of the students who have been in attendance dur- 
ing this period of time. Naturally there have been 
seasons of disappointments, periods of real anxiety, 
yet, withal, there have been great successes, or 
to-day you would not be here assembled to nar- 
rate these facts, and to fraternize with each other. 

All of these successful periods of public school 
23 



life were the great arteries of reproduction and 
growth of the educational interests of this country, 
and go back to the establishment of the first com- 
mon school, in 1633. 

The University of the State of New York was 
organized in 1784, by act of the State legislature. 
In that period of time there had been established 
within the territory of New York several elemen- 
tary schools, a few secondary schools, and King's 
College, now Columbia University. Originally the 
board of regents did not have jurisdiction over the 
elementary or common schools, although in various 
reports to the legislature, as early as 1787, they 
suggested the establishment of such schools; how- 
ever, not until 18 12 and 1813 was provision made 
for a State system of common schools. It may be 
said the first State system of education was inaug- 
urated in this act. 

It was now to be noticed that the educational 
work of New York State became vested in two 
bodies, i. e., the regents of the university and the 
superintendent of common schools ; the former hav- 
ing jurisdiction over academies and the higher in- 
stitutions, the latter the elementary and secondary 
schools. On so important an occasion as this it is 
but natural you should turn to the legal authority 
that watched over your early birth, development, 
growth, and maintenance, and that has ever been 
your steadfast guide and friend. 

It has been my good fortune to meet and mingle 

24 



with some of the graduates who have gone out 
from this institution, particularly among the mem- 
bers of the medical profession. I have known 
some of the teachers, and had a delightful, long 
acquaintance with one of the many able, earnest 
principals who have brought this school to its pre- 
sent high standing. I refer to that eminent educa- 
tor. Dr. Samuel B. Woolworth, your teacher and 
principal from 1830 to 1852. I met Dr. Wool- 
worth some years after he came to Albany, and our 
friendship continued very closely up to the time of 
his death. He told me much relating to this in- 
stitution, and it must be recognized that while he 
was here was evolved the idea of supplying teach- 
ers for our common schools, by the development of 
the normal school, first to make its appearance in 
Albany, and in which he at one time occupied the 
position of president. 

Under the twenty-one years of his principalship 
this institution you are honoring to-day ranked 
among the foremost academies of the State. It 
has retained in a great measure its prominence in 
classics for which the **old line" academies were 
distinguished, and, as a result, has probably sent 
as large a number of well-trained students to the 
colleges of New York and New England as any 
academy of the State. It is interesting to refer to 
the early reports of the academy. In 1846 there 
were 338 students reported during the year, 137 
of whom had pursued classical and higher studies 

25 



for at least four months. Three years later the 
attendance had increased to 480, of whom 238 were 
pursuing classical or higher studies. In 1851, the 
last year of Dr. Woolworth's principalship, an at- 
tendance of 575 was reported with 286 pursuing 
the classics or higher English, notwithstanding the 
fact that a tuition of five dollars per term was 
charged; perhaps the pecuniary demands for tui- 
tion may have been mitigated by the fact that 
board was procurable for from $1 .50 to $2 per week. 

In 1839 Dr. Woolworth reported the organiza- 
tion of a department for the education of teachers 
under the act requiring every academy in the re- 
ceipt of more than seven hundred dollars from the 
literature fund to establish such a department. 
Students were charged fifteen dollars per annum 
for tuition though "no student will be debarred 
from the advantages of this department by in- 
ability to pay the tuition." In 1840, forty-one 
young men were reported as taking the course and 
thirty-six engaged in teaching "with decided suc- 
cess." 

The idea of the State Normal School pledges 
seems to have originated here, as in 1842 it was 
decided to furnish gratuitous instruction to one 
young man from each town in the county, in order 
that they might become professional teachers and 
they were required to subscribe to the pledge to 
teach "some common school" for at least one year 
after leaving the department. 

26 



But it was more particularly as secretary of the 
board of regents that I knew Dr. Woolworth so 
intimately in educational affairs. His belief in the 
good work of such an institution as the Homer 
Academy never faltered, and I feel that the suc- 
cess that has been sufficient to carry you through a 
period of one hundred years is largely due to his 
sincere interest and unwavering loyalty. From 
the beginning of your charter in 1819 many able 
minds were giving thought to the educational in- 
terests of this country, particularly in the State of 
New York. 

When we look back it seems a long time required 
for the development of our educational system, and 
we find recorded many efforts made for a higher 
education than that afforded by the common 
school, hence we see the bringing into existence of 
academies, seminaries, private, select, and boarding 
schools. Of the latter many were but too plainly 
built on the hope of commercial success, but, in 
1850, and for a few years following that, there was 
a greater effort for systematic educational instruc- 
tion, through the organization of such institutions 
as yours. 

In 1854 ^^6 3,ct to develop a State department of 
public instruction evolved two distinct lines of 
educational interests, and between these two more 
or less friction continued. Dr. Woolworth was 
intensely interested in the work of this period and 
believed that in time there would be a consolida- 

27 



tion such as would encourage and care for the 
academies and institutions of higher educational 
work but this was not consummated until 1904, 
when the matter was happily adjusted, and Dr. 
Andrew S. Draper made commissioner of educa- 
tion. 

To-day, the High School, under that great act of 
legislature that provided union free schools, has 
observed and perhaps cared for in a more system- 
atic manner, the education of our youth than was 
followed out by the institutions to which I have 
previously referred, and which came into existence 
during the first and beginning of the second half 
of the nineteenth century. 

In 1850 there were about 165 academies report- 
ing to the regents. In i860, probably the maxi- 
mum year, there were about 175 such academies. 
From this time on the number declined. In 1870 
there were about 140; in 1875, about 125; in 1880, 
about 95; and in 1884 about 84. At present there 
are less than twenty-five of these "old line" acad- 
emies in existence, and who are doing such work as 
enables them to be classed among the successful 
schools of the State. 

The schools under the laws in Handbook 24, 
issued by our State board of regents, and now 
listed as academies, are schools of quite a different 
type from the so-called ' ' old line' ' academies. The 
latter, in a large sense, was a part of the public 
school system of the State. The charter of each of 

28 



these institutions provided that the funds of the 
institution "should never be used for any other 
purpose than for public academic instruction." 
The present list of academies is made up mostly of 
institutions that are either purely private institu- 
tions, operated for financial gain, or parochial 
schools. 

As I have stated, the main reason for the decline 
of the "old line" academy was the development 
of the public high school. A large proportion of 
the "old line" academies were taken over by the 
public schools and some of them still maintain the 
old name, although they are purely high schools. 

What an atmosphere of pride and credit is yours 
on this important day ! Those of you who gather 
here, and, perhaps, have not visited the old school 
in many years, salute each other with an energy 
that comes from the kind of thoughts that have 
been maintained in your lives, the high standard 
of intelligence, and the desire for the continuance 
of the wholesome instruction that came to you in 
your dear old Alma Mater. 

You are to be congratulated, but the word seems 
hardly sufficiently emphatic. The impressions 
made upon you result from the good you have 
seen follow the carrying out of the sturdy, healthy 
ideas that were inculcated in your minds when here 
as students. In the board of regents of the Uni- 
versity of the State of New York you have had 
loyal supporters. You have been faithful in teach- 

29 



ing and carrying out loyally the many suggestions 
that have been made to you by Dr. Wool worth, 
and others, up to and including our present presi- 
dent and commissioner, Dr. John H. Finley. 

Homer is honored by being the birthplace of 
Andrew D. White, and I believe it was but a short 
time preceding his death that his birthday was 
spent at his childhood's home. 

After a long life of honors here and elsewhere 
Dr. Woolworth lies in the place he loved so 
well. 

It is the wish of the board of regents to see the 
high standing you have maintained continue, in- 
creasing the educational advantages you are able 
to offer, through the generosity of the endowments 
of old, successful graduates, and by your various 
friends, for, in the additional courses that are now 
required in physics, biology, chemistry, etc., 
greater demands will be made upon your resources. 
Your teaching must be broad and thorough, not 
only in preparation of the man of agricultural and 
industrial life, and the man of business, but for the 
man or women who enters upon the various pro- 
fessions, who in after years will look back with 
comfort and joy upon the early, strong founda- 
tion of knowledge he has gained within your 
walls. 

Albert VanderVeer, M.D., 

Vice Chancellor, Board of Regents, University 
of the State of New York 

30 



FROM THE HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE STATE NOR- 
MAL COLLEGE, READ AT THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL 
ANNIVERSARY IN ALBANY, 1 894 

Samuel B. Woolworth, LL.D. was elected prin- 
cipal September 20, 1852. He had been many 
years in charge of the Homer, N. Y., Academy, in 
which he had made a reputation known and ac- 
knowledged throughout the State. He was a po- 
tential factor in the school for twenty-eight years, 
for when he resigned, February i, 1856, it was to 
become secretary of the board of regents and so a 
member of the executive committee in charge of 
the school. He thus remained the most active 
man in its management until his lamented death 
in 1880. 



FROM THE ADDRESS OF ANSON J. UPSON, CHANCEL- 
LOR OF THE REGENTS AT THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL 
CELEBRATION OF THE ALBANY STATE NORMAL 
SCHOOL, ALBANY, 1 894 

Samuel Buel Woolworth, a graduate of Hamilton 
College, the successor of Dr. Perkins in 1852, 
brought to this Normal School, from Onondaga 
valley and from Homer, New York, the knowledge 
and experience of a teacher of twenty-eight years. 
He had made teaching the business of his life. 
And among the lessons in education that he had 

3J 



learned before he came to Albany was the pre- 
eminent importance of classification in the organ- 
ization of a large school. Before his time in most 
of the academies of this State, perhaps, necessarily, 
the work of the teachers was interchangeable. In 
the Cortland Academy, at Homer, he had insisted 
upon what seems to us now to be axiomatic — a 
thorough and fixed division of labor, appointing 
teachers who each devoted his whole time to a 
single department, he himself, as principal, super- 
vising all. His success in this arrangement was so 
marked that he gained a public confidence which he 
brought with him to this city. * * Under his influ- 
ence a reorganization of this school was effected, 
the departments of instruction were made more 
distinct and teachers of liberal culture, acknowl- 
edged ability, and successful experience were se- 
cured for each department." 

Legislative hostility had been aroused against 
the school, but before Dr. Woolworth resigned, in 
1855, such had been the effect of his wisdom, sagac- 
ity, and varied knowledge of men and things, that 
the confidence of the public had been completely 
restored. 

We remember Dr. Woolworth as the laborious, 
capable, and acceptable secretary of the Regents 
of the University ; but as a principal of this school 
he did enough to secure for himself a lasting re- 
membrance. As he was my dear friend for many 
years, you will permit me here to repeat the words 

32 



which I wrote at his death. The lapse of fourteen 
years has only increased my conviction of their 
unqualified truth. "Faithful in duty, with broad 
views of educational administration, suggestive, 
sagacious, energetic, and public-spirited, he greatly 
promoted the advancement of academic and col- 
legiate education in this State; we would cherish 
affectionately the memory of his useful and hon- 
ored life and would imitate his unostentatious and 
beneficent example." 

By Reverend Henry A. Nelson y D.D.jin "Home and 

Abroad,'' published by the Presbyterian Board of 

Home and Foreign Missions 

HOMER ACADEMY 

The May number of the Church At Home and 
Abroad has the following in reference to the Old 
Academy at Homer: 

"Nothing in the pages of the Church At Home 
and Abroad interests me more than the things 
about colleges and academies. I was right glad, 
when the church started the new Board, that it 
was not to be for colleges only, but for academies 
too. I like that old name 'academy.' When I 
was a boy, that sort of high schools was more com- 
mon than they are now. They were founded and 
managed by Christian people. Their teachers 

33 



were Christian men and women. They had Chris- 
tian prayers, with reading the Bible and singing 
Christian hymns, and many of the teachers were 
very earnest and faithful and persevering in trying 
to lead their pupils to Christ. Often they were 
successful. One of the best of that sort of schools 
that ever I knew was at Homer, in Cortland 
County, in the State of New York. Likely there 
were many more just as good, but I went to that 
when I was a boy, and I shall never stop thanking 
God for the good teachers and good teaching which 
I had there. Sometimes I rang the bell, and built 
the fires, and swept the rooms for my tuition. 
Sometimes I boarded myself, as many of the boys 
and girls did. We would have a room in the vil- 
lage, and fetch our food in baskets, once a week, 
from our farm homes, several miles away. This 
made it very cheap. The academy had a wonder- 
ful influence in making the farmers' children all 
around want to get an education. Ira Harris, a 
United States Senator from New York, when a 
boy lived about ten miles from Homer, and he 
went there to school. After he became an eminent 
man I once heard him say, ' If it had not been for 
Homer Academy, so near my home, I should never 
have been anything more than a second-rate farmer 
on Preble Flats.' Now, I don't want you to think 
that it was only the boys that got to be senators 
who thank God for that old academy. The boys 
that stayed farmers did not stay second-rate f arm- 

34 



ers. Mr. Woolworth's lectures on chemistry were 
worth more to our farms than all the 'plaster of 
paris' we hauled from Syracuse. Better yet, there 
came to be more intelligence and more character 
in the families that lived on these farms, by a great 
deal, than there ever could have been without that 
blessed old Academy. I hope Mr. Ganse will get 
ever so many such in the new States and Terri- 
tories. Wherever he goes if he will inquire whether 
anybody lives there that ever went to school in 
Homer Academy, I reckon he will be surprised to 
see how often he will find them. In Omaha, for 
instance, let him just inquire for a lawyer by the 
name of Wool worth, and ask him if he is any rela- 
tion to the Woolworth that used to be principal of 
Homer Academy, and who was afterwards Secre- 
tary of the Board of Regents of the State of New 
York. He died in a good old age, and was carried 
to his grave in the old Homer burying ground by 
his own manly sons. 

' ' How I love to remember Principal Woolworth's 
lovely and encouraging ways of teaching. How 
plain he made the hard things in our lessons, and 
how interesting the dull things! How ashamed 
he made us of mean things and foolish things! 
How grand he made it seem to be useful ! Almost 
daily, at chapel prayers, he would pray, 'Let it 
never be true of any of us that the world is not 
better for our having lived in it. Help us to fill up 
our lives with usefulness and with duty. ' Many of 

35 



his pupils in more than one C9untry, and in many 
professions, are trying to do that. Blessed Old 
Homer Academy ! The world is not a little better 
for its having been in it. 

"Farmerson." 



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